Contactless K-Plussa card the best in Finland

KESKO CORPORATION PRESS RELEASE 07.11.2012 AT 17.30 1(2)

K-Plussa's contactless cash card is the best NFC technology based service in Finland in 2012. The recognition was announced at the Digimediapäivä 2012 event in Helsinki on 7 November 2012.

All mobile services on the market in 2012, as well as service ideas proposed by the general public participated in the competition for Finland's Best Mobile Service in 2012. There were 11 different categories of which K-Plussa card was the winner of 'The Best NFC service or concept' series.

The contactless K-Plussa card was launched for customers in February 2012 and is now used by some 300,000 K-Plussa customers. The card speeds up store checkout operation.

- The development of smooth store checkout operation is important in view of customers' shopping experience and the efficiency of store operations, says K-Plus Oy's Managing Director Tapio Näveri.

- Positive comments from our customers and this prize awarded to K-Plussa prove that our adoption of contactless near field communication (NFC) technology in our services has been the right choice, says Näveri.

This is the largest retail application based on NFC technology in Finland. Today, the K-Group stores have more than 5,000 payment terminals compatible with the contactless K-Plussa card. In the future, the same terminals can be used for wireless payment services.  

- At the same time, we want to encourage all our partners involved in the enhancement of payment transactions to develop their products in line with this development.

The competition organised by Teleforum was aimed to support the development of mobile services and innovations. The jury was composed of Minister Krista Kiuru (The Ministry of Transport and Communications), Peter Vesterbacka (Rovio), Vesku Paananen (Microsoft Finland), Paola Suhonen (Ivana Helsinki), Tero Ojanperä (Vision+ Fund), Anni Ronkainen (Google Finland) and Will Cardwell (Aalto Centre for Entrepreneurship).

Finland's Best Mobile Service 2012: www.bestmobileservice.fi

Further information:

Managing Director Tapio Näveri, K-Plus Oy, tapio.naveri@kesko.fi, tel. +358 1053 37170
Juhani Kivikangas, Teleforum ry, juhani.kivikangas@teleforum-ry.fi, tel. +358 40 556 1228

K-Plus Oy
K-Plussa is the most extensive and diverse customer loyalty programme in Finland which offers benefits to its customers from over 3,000 shopping places and over 40 business partners. There are around 3.8 million K-Plussa cardholders in over 2.2 million households in Finland. Further information is available at: www.plussa.com.

Kesko
Kesko (www.kesko.fi) is one of the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World. We are a retail specialist whose chains have about 2,000 stores in the Nordic and Baltic countries, Russia, and Belarus. Our stores offer quality to the daily lives of consumers.